Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series (Paramount) [Blu-ray Review]

Let’s Rock. Again.

On December 5th Paramount Home Media Distribution (PHMD) and CBS Home Entertainment presents Showtime Networks Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series Blu-ray Collection. The show that blew everyone’s minds this summer can now be yours as both a Blu-ray and DVD collectors set.

Twin Peaks set the standard for water cooler television when it originally aired over 25 years ago. The first season of Twin Peaks is arguably some of the best television ever. David Lynch and Mark Frost brought something to life in Twin Peaks that has managed to amaze and baffle audiences for years since the show saw original release.

The demise of Twin Peaks in its second season is now a thing of legend. Under both public and studio pressure to solve the mystery of Laura Palmer’s murder, the series took on increasingly diminishing viewership, even as the very mystery in question was being solved. Once that aired, much of the show’s audience abandoned the series, leading to a cliff-hanger finale episode (directed by Lynch) that yielded more questions than answers. The show wasn’t picked up for renewal for a third season.

Somehow, the gods of cinema took notice of the plight of Twin Peaks and a sequel (prequel) was optioned. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was released in 1992 – a psychological horror film directed by David Lynch and written by Lynch and Robert Engels. The film revolves around an investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley) and leads into the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). Some of the cast from the original series didn’t return. The film drew poor box office returns. In the 25 years since it’s release, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me has grown in popularity amongst David Lynch fans. Even as this film answered some questions fans were looking for, it once again managed to leave audiences asking more questions. That seemed to be the end for Twin Peaks.

I type this in a matter of fact fashion. I’m a devout Twin Peaks fan and followed the show through to its demise. I’ve never attended the yearly Twin Peaks fan Festival, but I have bought all of the books and was a long time subscriber to the Wrapped In Plastic fanzine that kept the series alive in the years following the end of the series.

A few years ago, an amazing Blu-ray set was released that contained the entire first and second seasons of Twin Peaks, along with the Fire Walk With Me film. Included with this set was a David Lynch curated featurette entitled The Missing Pieces – a ninety-minute montage of expanded/deleted scenes from Fire Walk With Me that up until this release had been only talked about in interviews. People started to question the possibility of more Twin Peaks.

While in the Red Room (a kind of limbo/hell in the thick woods outside Twin Peaks) in the final episode of the original series a spirit who looks (looked) like Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) says “I’ll see you again in 25 years.” to Kyle McLachlan’s Agent Cooper. It was another piece of weirdness in a show filled with abstraction and strangeness – and certainly wasn’t alluding to Twin Peaks returning two and half decades after it aired, but in a truly Lynchian twist of fate, this is exactly what happened. Showtime optioned the third season of Twin Peaks – 18 episodes of Twin peaks directed entirely by David Lynch, and co-written by series creators Mark Frost and David Lynch. Over the spring and summer of 2017, Twin Peaks was once again the show to be watching.

Some notes here about the new episodes (I’m going to try and keep this as free from spoilers as possible. There will need to be a few plot points revealed as I’m going to need to divulge them in order to properly serve this write-up).

Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series (TPALES) does indeed take place 25 years after the events of original series. A healthy amount of the original cast and crew have returned to the show, along with a battery of new faces. These episodes contain the final work of actors Harry Dean Stanton, Warren Frost, Miguel Ferrer, Catherine Coulson who all passed away during or shortly after filming these new episodes. Catherine Coulson (The Log Lady) did scenes for these episodes only a few days before she died of complications from cancer, Coulson’s commitment to Lynch and her character being that important to her. Even in death, Don S. Davis (Major Briggs), Frank Silva (Killer Bob) and David Bowie (Phillip Jeffries) feature into these new Twin Peaks – some of them in surprising ways.

Kyle MacLachlan acts as numerous entities in TPALES, exploring the 25 year ramifications of that now infamous final scene where we see MacLachlan’s Agent Cooper bleeding, reflected in a mirror with Frank Silva’s (Killer Bob) reflection in his place.

We are introduced to numerous new characters such as
Naomi Watts as Janey-E Jones
Ashley Judd as Beverly Paige
Matthew Lillard as William Hastings
Chrysta Bell as Tammy Preston
Jane Adams as Constance Talbot
Ben Rosenfeld as Sam Colby
Madeline Zima as Tracey
Robert Forster as Sheriff Frank Truman
Amy Shiels as Candie
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Chantal Hutchens
Tim Roth as Gary “Hutch” Hutchens
Eamon Farren as Richard Horne
Laura Dern as Diane Evans
Jim Belushi as Bradley Mitchum
Robert Knepper as Rodney Mitchum

Music features heavily once again into TPALES. Angelo Badalamenti returns as the series composer. There are numerous amazing musical pieces throughout the 18 new episodes, delivered as hypnotic live performances booked into the fictional Twin Peaks watering hole The Bang Bang Bar. Chromatics, The Cactus Blossoms, Au Revoir Simone, Trouble, Sharon Van Etten, (THE) Nine Inch Nails, Rebekah del Rio, Lissie, The Veils, Eddie Vedder, James Hurley (James Marshall) and of course Julee Cruise all bring superb performances to the series.

The TPALES series was shot continuously from a single lengthy shooting script before being edited into episodes. Filming was completed by April 2016. The cast often had very little time to get familiar with their lines, as the script pages were doled out to them in small increments in the days (or in some cases, hours) before filming. The best way to approach TPALES is like it’s an 18-hour long movie. The episodes themselves defy many of the elements that comprise a conventional television series. I myself found that I was getting frustrated 6 episodes in because I had no idea where everything was going. Upon reflection “having no idea where everything was going” was the very reason I liked the original Twin Peaks run. Go into this series for what it is, 18 episodes of new footage filmed by David Lynch outside of the constraints of mainstream television. Thank the powers that be at Showtime for taking the chance on a series the way they did with TPALES. I’m pretty sure optioning these episodes wasn’t a fiscal windfall for Showtime. But it’s hands down the strangest, most challenging and beautiful television you will ever see. Episode 8 (entitled Gotta Light?) broke the internet in the hours after it aired – there was so much bafflement, love and accolade spilling out online about it. It’s the strangest hour of television you will ever see – and you can take that to the bank.

As the series saw release this year, Entertainment Weekly’s men from another place Jeff Jensen and Darren Franich would dissect the episodes shortly after broadcast and put them on the interweb for fans to enjoy. Their open discussions about what they saw included input from Damon Lindelof, Kyle MacLachlan, Robert Forster, Laura Dern and John Thorne. I’d recommend you listen to these podcasts as you go through the series. A Twin Peaks Podcast: A Podcast About Twin Peaks can be found here

Who is John Thorne you might ask? John Thorne (along with his writing partner Craig Miller, who passed away in 2012) put out Wrapped In Plastic (WIP) magazine, publishing 75 issues between 1992 and 2005 before retiring the magazine. WIP was (and still is) the finest assembling of Twin Peaks related writings on the planet. Some of the articles within have been assembled into a trade book edition entitled The Essential Wrapped In Plastic: Pathways to Twin Peaks which can be found online and in book stores. John Thorne along with fellow Twin Peaks zealot Scott Ryan have recently started up Blue Rose Magazine – A Twin Peaks Journal. Already three issues have been released, with a fourth due before the end of the calendar year. Readership has been good, and John and Scott just recently announced that issues 5-8 will be produced in 2018. Learn more here

For the Blu-ray and DVD collectors set, fans get an intriguing look behind the scenes through numerous extra features.

Appearing on both the Blu-ray and DVD collections, IMPRESSIONS: A Journey Behind the Scenes of Twin Peaks is a series of ten (10), approximately thirty (30) minute films directed by longtime Lynch documentarian and friend Jason S., who was given unparalleled access to document the making of the series.  Each of these ten (10) films capture the triumphs and tribulations of a master director and true artist at work. The collections also include Phenomenon, a three-part featurette in which series cast and crew join artists, musicians and creative personalities to reflect on the enduring legacy of Twin Peaks; the Twin Peaks panel at San Diego Comic-Con® 2017, moderated by Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers, Lost) and featuring Lynch’s on-camera introduction; series promos produced by Lynch for SHOWTIME, as well as one for in-cinema play; a grouping of all eighteen (18) different Rancho Rosa (the series’ production company) logos from the top of each part; and a behind-the-scenes photo gallery. Lastly, through seamless branching, both Part 1 and 2, and 3 and 4 of the series are included individually, as well as in combined feature-length presentations, as they were originally shown on Showtime in the U.S.

For fans who want the definitive version of TWIN PEAKS: A LIMITED EVENT SERIES, the Blu-ray, featuring deluxe packaging, will contain three additional behind-the-scenes films. Independent filmmaker, photographer and Twin Peaks’ Ben Horne – Richard Beymer – directed two compelling featurettes, Behind the Red Curtain and I Had Bad Milk in Dehradun, that follow Lynch and company as they shoot in the Red Room. In A Very Lovely Dream: One Week in Twin Peaks, filmmaker Charles DeLauzirika, who has produced and directed numerous featurettes for previous Twin Peaks home entertainment products, documents a week on the set when the cast returned to Snoqualmie and North Bend locations from the original series 25 years later.
 
Starring Golden Globe® winner Kyle MacLachlan (Blue Velvet, Dune), the SHOWTIME 18-part series picks up 25 years after the inhabitants of a quaint northwestern town were stunned by the shocking murder of their homecoming queen Laura Palmer. TWIN PEAKS is written and executive produced by series creators Mark Frost and David Lynch, and is executive produced by Sabrina S. Sutherland.
 
The TPALES special feature breakdown is as follows:

BLU-RAY AND DVD:
IMPRESSIONS: A Journey Behind the Scenes of Twin Peaks
o  The Man with the Grey Elevated Hair (29:40)
o  Tell it Martin (29:08)
o  Two Blue Balls (24:14)
o  The Number of Completion (29:17)
o  Bad Binoculars (28:08)
o  See You on the Other Side Dear Friend (30:00)
o  Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers (26:44)
o  A Bloody Finger in Your Mouth (26:49)
o  The Polish Accountant (28:05)
o  A Pot of Boiling Oil (38:32)
·     Phenomenon
o  Part 1: Creation (4:40)
o  Part 2: Life After Death (4:50)
o  Part 3: Renaissance (4:50)
·     Behind-the-scenes Photo Gallery
·     Rancho Rosa Logos (2:25)
·     San Diego Comic-Con 2017 Twin Peaks Panel (61:26)
·     David Lynch Produced Promos
o  Piano (1:02)
o  Donut (:32)
o  Woods (:32)
o  People (:32)
o  Places (:32)
o  Albert (1:02)
o  In – cinema (1:32)
 
BLU-RAY EXCLUSIVE:
·     A Very Lovely Dream: One Week in Twin Peaks (27:09)
·     Behind the Red Curtain (29:17)
·     I Had Bad Milk in Dehradun (28:11)

“This is the water and this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and the dark within.” The Woodsman